Sofia Tech Park

Sofia Tech Park, inaugurated on 11 December 2015, is Bulgaria's first state-owned science and technology park, built with EUR 42.69 million in total investment, of which EUR 36.29 million came from the EU's European Regional Development Fund under the 2007-2013 Operational Programme 'Competitiveness'.

What it does: the park comprises a laboratory complex (11 labs spanning AI, VR, 3D prototyping, IoT, microelectronics, HPC, cybersecurity, biopharma and bioinformatics), a business incubator, an innovation forum and a public science centre (TechnoMagicLand, 50+ interactive exhibits), and hosts the EuroHPC 'Discoverer' petascale supercomputer. In 2024 Sofia Tech Park and the INSAIT research institute were selected to host one of six new EU 'AI factories' (the BRAIN++ project), backed by a further EUR 90 million to build a next-generation 'Discoverer++' supercomputer and AI services centre, with construction starting in 2026.

Results: as the first facility of its kind in Bulgaria, it anchors the country's ICT, life-sciences and green-energy innovation activity and gives Bulgarian researchers and SMEs access to EU-scale HPC infrastructure that would otherwise be unavailable domestically.

Caveat: public reporting documents infrastructure investment and EU-funding milestones in detail, but does not yet provide independently audited counts of resident companies, jobs or commercialisation outcomes comparable to more established parks.

Why it's a good practice: a decade-long, EU-cofinanced trajectory from first national science park to anchor site of an EU AI factory, showing sustained public investment and recognition at EU level.

Read the full analysis: https://sofiatech.bg/en/